


That Level Heads Yet Prevail

by morrezela



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Declarations Of Love, First Kiss, M/M, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 16:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13617102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morrezela/pseuds/morrezela
Summary: Ignis, despite his name, was not prone to outbursts of temper or rage. That was Gladio’s wheelhouse.





	That Level Heads Yet Prevail

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ignoct Week 2018's Day 3 Flash Prompt "Sometimes I can’t decide if I want to kiss you or strangle you."
> 
> All mistakes you find herein are my own.

Anger boiled through his veins, displacing any relief there might have been inside them. Ignis, despite his name, was not prone to outbursts of temper or rage. That was Gladio’s wheelhouse. He was supposed to be the calm, level headed one. 

But the sight of his king, looking so unrepentant and smug was making something ugly coil within him. He desperately wished for his glasses, for the need to wear them as anything other than protective gear. They had always been a shield between him and his less appropriate opinions. The ritual of taking them off his face, cleaning them, and putting them back on was a calming one. It helped to focus his thoughts away from impetuous feelings. 

Apparently lighting oneself on fire and then getting healed by the blasted chosen king, his crystal, the power of the Astrals, and possibly a bunch of dead kings came with the benefit of good vision. And, really, Ignis would have preferred the bonus perk be applied to the scarring on his face. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. 

Now all he had was a naked face, a smug king, and witnesses to what was going to be an explosive situation. He could only control one of those factors. 

“Gladio, take guard please?” Ignis’s voice was calm, controlled, and the result of practice and discipline that now stretched into the decades. Fuck but he felt old. Much too old to be dealing with wayward royalty. 

Noctis glanced at him at the order. He had such beautiful eyes. His near perfect hair swung a bit with the motion. Black like a raven’s wing. Ignis knew it to be soft to the touch. He knew not in that moment whether he desperately wanted to bury his fingers in it, or yank it out of that damned fool head. 

Beside him, Gladio hesitated before taking his order. Possibly he was waiting for Noctis to confirm or belay it. Possibly he was just unused to Ignis using his authority to order him about. But as Noctis voice no objection, Gladio ushered the guards out of the room and took place at the door. 

“Something on your mind, Ignis?” Noctis asked, voice a study in nonchalance. 

Ignis wanted to grind his teeth together, but he hadn’t made it through years of ruin with perfect teeth only to fracture one because of his king being an asshole. Ignis had taught him that tone, and here he was using it against him. 

“You cannot leave without telling anyone where you are going. Certainly not without at least telling Gladio or myself. It is foolhardy, reckless, and dangerous.”

“I’m fine Ignis,” Noctis said with a gesture to his body. “Not a scratch on me.”

The breath that Ignis took in was more ragged than controlled. “Be that as it may, it could have been dangerous. There are many who would gladly see you fall.”

“Yeah, and I killed the biggest and baddest of them. You think that some political assassin is going to get me when Ardyn didn’t?” Noctis scoffed. “I have a covenant with fucking gods, in case you can’t remember.” 

“And that power is exactly why you must be careful. Surely you know that there are those who worry you are too powerful. Too strong. They would see you dead if only to assuage their own fears that you will begin to use that power against them,” Ignis willed his king to see reason. “And even were they not out there, plotting your demise. A king cannot just go missing whenever he pleases. It could cause panic in the masses or worse.”

“You didn’t seem to think that when we were younger,” Noctis pointed out. His voice was almost cold. 

Ignis wasn’t about to let that statement go unchallenged, and he rather suspected Noctis knew that. “The key word being ‘we’ in that sentence. I was with you. You had someone who knew where you were and could protect you, help you if something went amiss.”

A muscle twitched in Noctis’s cheek. “I’m not a child anymore, Ignis. Quit mothering me.” 

“If you do not wish to be mothered, mayhap you should attempt to act as a king instead of a spoiled child!” Ignis shot back. 

The flicker of upset, of hurt that came through Noctis’s eyes was gratifying in the extreme. Good, Ignis thought, now he knew what it was like to be thought ill of by somebody close. 

“Well why don’t you tell me what you really think?” was Noctis’s snide reply when he managed to find words. 

“What I really think? I don’t think you want me to tell you that,” Ignis snarled, his emotions were getting the better of him, but he seemed helpless to stop them. Noctis was standing before him, perfectly alive and whole. But all he could think of, all he could see was his body, lifeless on a street somewhere. His body, cold and alone and surrounded by nothing but rock for the second time in his life. His body, being plunged through with his father’s blade, wielded by his father’s hand…

“I do,” Noctis said. “You aren’t going to deny a request from your king, are you? That doesn’t seem the sort of thing a royal advisor should do, let alone a chamberlain.”

The problem, some distant part of Ignis’s brain analyzed, was that people who had known each other for so long knew the exactly right buttons to push in an argument. Nobody knew Noctis better than Ignis, but the same was true in reverse. And Noctis had a streak of ruthlessness that Ignis could never hope to possess. It was the blood of kings in his veins that made him take attack routes that lesser men would never even consider. 

“Sometimes,” Ignis paused, trying to swallow down the rage trying to claw out of his throat, “I don’t know whether I want to kiss you or strangle you.” His hand reached for glasses that were no longer there, so he had to awkwardly run his fingers through his hair, messing up the styling that had taken him so long that morning. 

He cast his eyes to the wall behind Noctis, willing himself to calm down. Willing his heart to stop pounding like he was twenty-two again and fighting his first troupe of MTs. Gladio made a strangled sound behind him, part cough and part words dying in his throat. 

“I wasn’t aware you felt either way,” Noctis said. He sounded nonplussed. Wrongfooted. Confused. 

Ignis forced his eyes to look at Noctis’s face. He looked rather like he’d been smacked in the head by the hooves of a spiracorn. Ignis wouldn’t say he was gaping, because royalty did not gape, but if Noctis wasn’t royalty, the look might apply. 

“Were my feelings not clear enough?” Ignis asked, unable to keep the venom out of his voice. 

Noctis frowned as if deep in thought. “Is that why you put on the ring?”

“What?” Now it was Ignis’s turn to be confused. 

Noctis slumped down in a nearby chair. “Holy shit,” he whispered. “That was why you put on the ring! That was why the ring didn’t turn you into a heap of smoking Ignis! I mean, it did, but you know what I mean.”

Now the concern from earlier in the evening was returning. Ignis cast a glance at Gladio who looked far too amused for the situation. Perhaps there had been some sort of attack or incident. “Are you well?” he asked, hand already fetching his phone out of his pocket. He would call a doctor. Noctis should be examined immediately. 

“Who are you calling?” Noctis asked. “Put the phone down and tell me about the kissing thing.”

“What kissing thing?” Ignis asked before his brain caught up with what was going on. It wasn’t often that he spoke without thinking through what he was saying, and this was why. “I meant that in a metaphorical sense,” he tried to correct. 

Gladio made the same strangled noise again. 

“Metaphorical strangling?” Noctis asked. “Is that like when you strangle somebody because it gets them off?

“No,” Ignis was fully horrified now. His own lapse in judgment was proving catastrophic on all levels. 

“So you’re not into strangling for sex?” Noctis asked. 

“No! I feel we are getting off track here. I only meant that there are times when I do not know whether my fondness for you makes me want to protect you or harm you myself,” Ignis explained. 

“And your fondness wants to kiss me,” Noctis observed. There was an insufferably smug look upon his face. 

“Do not say it like that,” Ignis pleaded. “We are getting drastically off subject.”

“Yeah, no. We’re definitely on subject,” Noctis disagreed as he got up from his chair. “Were you worried I was off smooching somebody who wasn’t you?”

Ignis scowled at him. “I was worried you were lying dead somewhere.”

Noctis paused for a moment before walking over to where Ignis was standing. His hand reached up to rest on Ignis’s shoulder. “I’m not dead.”

“I can see that,” Ignis hissed back. 

“You have really pretty eyes,” Noctis replied.

“What?” Ignis got out before Noctis stretch up and pressed a short, soft kiss against his mouth. 

“For the record, you should kiss me,” Noctis told him. 

Gladio cleared his throat more loudly than necessary. “So, do you really need me in here? Because I really don’t want to watch the two of you make out.” 

“We’re not going to make out,” Ignis said at the same time as Noctis’s “Yeah, you can go.” 

Gladio took the king’s order, as he should. But Ignis couldn’t help but feel just the tiniest bit betrayed for now he was alone with Noctis. And Noctis was very close to him. He was wearing the cologne Ignis had given him. It wasn’t anything as nice as what used to be produced as perfumeries were hardly an industry of necessity. There had been a lady selling tinctures in the marketplace that had sprung up outside the Citadel. Next to her medicinal ones had been a selection of different scents. 

The purchase had been an impulse buy, but Ignis had the money to purchase it and the lady had been very kind. As advisor, such a gift would have been entirely inappropriate. As a friend, it would have been too intimate. But as a chamberlain, it was nothing but another task to fulfill. The mixture of citrus and spices did smell wonderful on Noctis. 

“You smell nice,” Ignis stupidly said. He could feel the heat leeching of Noctis’s body from how close they were standing. He really should step away and put some distance between them. 

“You’re biased,” Noctis countered. 

Ignis cleared this throat. “I suppose I am,” he admitted.

“Are you biased enough to give me a ‘proper kiss’?” Noctis asked, mimicking Ignis’s accent. 

“Are you going to sneak out through the garden alone again?” Ignis countered. 

Noctis grinned. It was a wonderful look that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. “Not if you give me a reason to take you with.”

Ignis wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with that sort of proposition. Probably not kiss his king until both their lips were puffy and their eyes were glazed. 

But he did it anyway.


End file.
